Spammer, Spoofed or Hacked?

Being a self-publishing author is a lot of work. There are a plethora of social media platforms, and communication tools that make it possible for authors (or any creative) to connect with their audience. One of the best ways for authors to speak to potential readers is through a blog. Clever authors only have one… (read more)

Public Domain Cover Art

I’ve been working on a video for my PubSlush pitch for my next novel, which has led me off on a tangent or two… This is the cover art I’ve made for what I believe to be the only Public Domain book (so far) by Rex Stout, the creator of Nero Wolfe. One of the… (read more)

R.I.P. Leonard Nimoy

Leonard Nimoy RIP

I was so sorry to hear of the passing of Leonard Nimoy, a man who made such a great impression on so many of us with his incredible portrayal of the most decidedly human-alien, Mr. Spock. Image Credit This is a thumbnail drawing of Mr. Spock I did for the science fiction fanzine CANEKTION, my… (read more)

Happy Birthday Isaac Asimov

Isaac Asimov by Rowena Morrill

[reblogged from   visual laurel: Happy Birthday Isaac Asimov] I may be a little late here, but if memory serves, although January 2nd would have been  Isaac Asimov’s birth date of record, it seems to me he told some tale about the actual records being confused due to his family’s emigration from Russia.  Whatever else,  Asimov was… (read more)

Happy 2015

All the planning in the world can’t prevent the unexpected from happening, and sometimes the unexpected throws up a detour. . . or several. While some good things have happened, I’ve had to face some incredibly difficult challenges in 2014. As a result, this past year has felt as though I’ve been running on a… (read more)

32 Seconds ~ an indie novel

for your consideration: J.K. Pitcairn’s “32 Seconds”   .   .   .   To the average onlooker, the city of Los Angeles represents glitz, glamour, and the celebrity lifestyle. But to seventeen-year-old Julie Jones, the city is a vast host of problems she’s longing to get away from. The latest? An unfortunate disagreement with… (read more)

Merry Christmas!

HAPPY HOLIDAYS CC by-sa based on Harald Olsen's image

My lovely Rudolph card would not have been possible without Per Harald Olsen’s gorgeous Svalbardrein pho which he has released on Wikimedia Commons under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. “Happy Holidays” by Laurel L. Russwurm is likewise released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

…and so it ends

with Irmgard Keun

I’ve never written anything in the neighborhood of ten thousand words in a single day before.  And yet that was the incredible feat I managed to accomplish on November 30th. But it still wasn’t enough. in the beginning This year I had decided that I was going to finish NaNoWriMo 2014 with 50k. That’s what… (read more)

And so it begins…

Jazz Age Laurel

NaNoWriMo is the (now International) National Novel Writing Month.  I’ve participated every year since I wrote my first novel. But some traditional publishers and traditionally published authors look down their noses at NaNoWriMo.  Some people trash NaNoWriMo as a way to drive traffic from the ever-increasing international NaNoWriMo community to their own websites.  Some people… (read more)

Free Software for NaNoWriMo

NaNoWriMo write-in - Computer on table

Surveillance and Software With NaNoWriMo approaching, I shared a disturbing article about surveillance — “Adobe is Spying on Users, Collecting Data on Their eBook Libraries” on one of the NaNoWriMo boards I visit. This got me an acknowledgement that yes, we are being routinely spied on by our software, but there is nothing to worry about…. (read more)

James Garner

James Garner as the charming and charismatic Brett Maverick

It’s funny how imagination and empathy can allow people to feel a connection to people we’ve never met. That’s why some Wikipedia character pages have more depth and information than those for real people. For me as a writer, character is at least as important as story.  Maybe even more so. A brilliantly written or… (read more)

A Union Station Setting

Doric Columns

I’m working on the opening of “The Girl In the Blue Flame Cafe,” which is set in Toronto’s landmark Union Station. Since I no longer live in Toronto, when I started writing I had to rely on my memory of the station’s internal geography.  That was when I realized just how spotty memory can be. … (read more)

Research: Vorovskoy Mir

YouTube: Russian Mafia Documentary

Thought you might be interested in some of the research I’ve been doing for “The Girl In The Blue Flame Cafe” In my novel, the Blue Flame Cafe is a jazz club that is really a Russian Mafiya front. This is an interesting documentary about the Russian Mafiya or the “Vorovskoy Mir” [direct translation: “Thieves… (read more)